Ixtab

by Henk Jan van Schevicoven

Ixtab is the Maya goddess of the noose and the gallows. She is also the protector of those who committed suicide. It was believed that those who committed suicide or died by hanging, together with slain warriors, sacrificial victums, priests, and woman who died in childbirth, went straight to eternal rest in paradise. Ixtab gathered them and brought them there.

She is depicted as hanging from a tree with a noose around her neck, her eyes closed in death and her body partly decomposed.